British author and Nobel Prize winner Sir V.S. Naipaul has died at the age of 85, his family said.

His wife, Lady Nadira Naipaul, said he had died peacefully at his home in London.

In a statement to the Press Association on Saturday night, she added: “He was a giant in all that he achieved and he died peacefully surrounded by those he loved having lived a life which was full of wonderful creativity and endeavour.”

The Trinidad-born author wrote more than thirty books, which often dealt with colonialism and attacked religion, politicians and pillars of the literary establishment.

He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2001 for “having united perceptive narrative and incorruptible scrutiny in works that compel us to see the presence of suppressed histories”.

The Academy singled out his 1987 work The Enigma of Arrival, saying he created an “unrelenting image of the placid collapse of the old colonial ruling culture and the demise of European neighbourhoods”.

The writer, who was knighted in 1990, won numerous other major writing prizes throughout his life, including the Booker in 1971 and the David Cohen British literature prize in 1993.

His 1961 novel, A House for Mr Biswas, is regarded by many critics as one of his most seminal works.

The book was based on the life of his father Seepersad, who was a reporter for the Trinidad Guardian.

Naipaul’s books on Islamic fundamentalism – the 1981 work Among the Believers and the 1998 book Beyond Belief – were written after he travelled through non-Arab “converted” Islamic countries.

His attacks on the religion prompted leading English professor Edward Said to say: “It is hard to believe any rational person would attack an entire culture on that scale.”

Naipaul was also not scared of criticising the considered greats of English literature.

He died peacefully surrounded by those he loved having lived a life which was full of wonderful creativity and endeavour
Lady Nadira Naipaul